Each Friday,

Regular readers might remember Ray and Marla from another photo I took along my commute. To refresh your memory, click here. I only looked back to make sure I got the names right and then again, after I finished writing this post, so I could insert the link. Hmmm…. I wonder what’s up with birds and these two fictional characters.

"How much longer?" Ray tugged at the neck of her Outsider.
Marla hinged at the waist and held both Ray's hands in hers. "You wanted to a bird," she said. "You must keep covered."
Marla tightened her own respirator straps. It smells like rain on oiled steel, she thought. Perhaps her memory was playing tricks on her again. She checked Ray's respirator.
"Too tight," Ray pulled away.
"Do you smell anything?"
"Just this morning's bulger breakfast."
Ray's lips turned up a little at the corners and her eyes twinkled behind her face-shield. "How much longer?"
"The top of this hill, around the corner and down a ways."
The "hill" was once a handicap ramp to the Green Line, but Ray knew nothing of that. She'd never seen a hill, or anything else covered in life.
"Remember, no promises." Marla pulled herself upright and took Ray's hand in hers. "I just said I this was the most likely place for a bird." She remembered the pigeons and starlings, and sparrows nesting here before everything changed.
Marla was on a mission to prove that birds, do indeed have two eyes. She'd searched every book she had, including her old Visual Dictionary.
"See," Ray gloated. "Only one eye."
Marla tried to tell her that the second eye was on the side that didn't show. Her efforts were fruitless.
"Prove it," Ray said planting her fists on her hips, feet shoulder width apart, as if ready to physically defend her position.
Marla would show her if she could, even if it meant turning over a bird carcass.